Post Content

So, today was the 75th anniversary of the beginning of Dick Tracy! Many of the strips distributed by the same syndicate offered their tributes today, which were for the most part significantly less wanktastic than Blondie’s endless anniversary hijinks. The awards for the two least seamless nods go to:

Gil Thorp, 10/4/06

Gil Thorp, which features a namecheck by a teenager who never reads the paper and wouldn’t read a 75-year-old comic strip if he did, and who was at most two years old when the most recent movie incarnation of the franchise came out; and…

Shoe, 10/4/06

Shoe, which features Detective Tracy’s severed head in a case behind Roz’s bar, with death’s grim rictus forcing him to feign amusement at this awful joke.

In non-Dick Tracy news:

Mary Worth, 10/4/06

Actually, it seems to me that in a single evening you corrected things quite nicely.

Seriously, I’m really beginning to believe that Mary and her crew are just going to talk themselves into a sense of guiltless satisfaction. If this is the beginning of the all-singing, all-dancing, all-sociopathic Mary Worth, then I’m going to just embrace it and run with it. I can’t wait to see what murderous crimes they’re going to escalate to next! “Yes, perhaps crucifying Mr. Jenkins in the Charterstone courtyard and leaving him to die over a period of days was a bit harsh, but he did tread on the flowerbed, and there is a sign warning against doing just that, so in a real sense, this is all his doing.”

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/4/06

Wow. So, it looks like June and Heather are on the verge of a full-on makeout session, with Rex watching from afar and thinking “ME LIKEY!” Could this strip get any more polymorpheously perverse — or divorced from its ostensible narrative content?

June seems pretty upset that Heather’s petty personal problems have ruined her vacation plans. I’m surprised Heather even bothers to bring up her mother’s feelings, which are clearly not as important as June’s, who had already picked out the kilt Rex was going to wear. All this clan stuff sounds promising to me, though; Heather’s English, if I remember right, so maybe we’ll get into some kind of Anglo-Scot hatred storyline that will baffle the vast majority of Americans for whom all “those people over there” are pretty much indistinguishable.

They’ll Do It Every Time, 10/4/06

YEAH, THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS! ‘CAUSE YOU STILL LOVE HER, BUT SHE LOATHES THE VERY SIGHT OF YOU! WHAT’RE YA GONNA DO? HAW HAW! Ah, whimsy.

UPDATE: So it turns out that “David Tarafa” is actually faithful reader and occasional commentor Lambnesiac, who is the first Curmudgeonite to be successfully TDIETed. And, uh, whose marriage is I’m sure much, much healthier than the Scadutotization would have you believe. Uh. Heh.

Post Content

Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/15/06

As is too often the case with this feature, the current Rex Morgan, M.D. storyline started strong and then meandered around a bit before fizzling out, taking way, way too long to wrap up. To sum up for those of you who rely on me for your Rex Morgan plot news: Rex’s boytoy Troy turned out to be a con-man named “Adam” who skipped town rather than go back to prison; Troy/Adam’s beard wife was left devastated but determined to carry on with the children’s clinic; the blackmailer was gunned down by a SWAT team, though we were assured in a half-hearted way that she’ll survive; and little Sarah’s “mystery illness” turned out to be a bruise she got when she was accidentally knocked over by the dog, but she didn’t want to rat the poor pooch out because she was afraid that she (the dog, not Sarah) would get sent back to the pound. And now we’re ready for more vaguely medically-themed adventures next week. Still, the last couple frames here are a poignant little moment between a husband and wife who have a complicated relationship and a big secret that they can’t talk about, even with each other. Presumably tomorrow’s strip is just going to feature Rex sitting alone at his desk, sobbing “Troy!” over and over.

Shoe, 9/15/06

Yeah, see, this is the sort of thing that would be funnier if all the characters in the strip weren’t, you now, birds. I mean, couldn’t the dialogue in the second panel just as easily have been, “Can you catch bird flu from any of the other characters in this strip, seeing as they’re birds and all?” Do you think that the artists have been drawing them all as birds for so long that they’ve forgotten?

Given the occasional conservative politics that bubble up in this strip, the punchline perhaps should have been, “Can you catch treason from the Dixie Chicks?” It would have been just as funny.

Post Content

Shoe, 8/31/06

The punchline of this joke is at once bland, hackneyed, vaguely sexist, told better elsewhere, and immediately forgettable — classic Shoe, in other words. Of more interest to the comics student is Roz’s wide-eyed, head-bobbling reaction. She looks like the Perfersser just told her that the Health Department is planning to shut her diner down because of a psittacosis outbreak, not because she’s just been fed some dumb “male birds are from Mars, female birds are from Venus” shtick. (By the way, Perfesser, girl birds have feathers, not hair.) Is she not used to this sort of lameness? How long has she been in this damn strip?

The Phantom, 8/31/06

I have to admit to being a little dissapointed with the conclusion of this Phantom storyline, with the Ghost-Who-Yuks-It-Up-With-Midgets seeming pretty blasé about allowing Chatu the Shirtless Terrorist to escape and shirtlessly terrorize another day. Now we know that, for the Phantom, the big thrill is not bringing bare-torsoed ne’er-do-wells to justice, but instead setting things up so that you can really screw with their heads a few years down the line.

Luann, 8/31/06

Hey, everybody! The Toni and Brad Show’s back! Just like we’ve all been waiting for all this time! Right? Right?

Right?

[awkward silence]

In an effort to say something nice, I’ll say this: I like the way Reddy’s eyes are cast sarcastically to the right in the first panel. I’m imagining an elaborate series of electrodes attached to Brad’s ape-like mug so that the li’l safety robot can display a full panoply of lifelike facial expressions.

Mary Worth, 8/31/06

And heeeeere comes the bludgeoning.